I remember back in high school they were a band that it was considered cool to say you listened to, even if you didn’t. I did actually like Zeichnungen des Patienten O. T, but otherwise I’d say that their biggest strengths are a bad ass sounding name and a cool, cryptic looking logo.
That’s one of my favorite albums. I enjoy listening to women with beautiful, powerful voices make awkward squawking noises, though. 
(Although I have to be in a very specific mood for Diamanda Galas.)
I was thinking of Leonard Cohen this morning. His early albums, where it’s mostly him and his guitar, are lovely. When he gets within five feet of a synthesizer, though…ooof.
What do you think of Let England Shake? I like most of it, and appreciate what she is doing. But I miss the raucous noise and humor of her early stuff.
Inside the metal world, Slayer’s Reign In Blood is seen as an absolute classic. I never understood why. Apart from “Angel of Death” and “Reign in Blood”, this album is just 16th-note uninteresting atonal shredding.
I feel the very same way. Dry is too rough and unformed for me to really enjoy, and everything from Stories from the City onward has all been disappointing to varying degrees. (Uh Huh Her is her weakest album, IMO.) I continue to love her, though, because I love her and while Let England Shake doesn’t really bowl me over, I’ve seen some recent interviews with her in which she talks about her motivations behind the album and I really admire what she was trying to do. (These are the two interviews, if you’re interested.)
Thanks for the links. I love her as well. If I could see anyone live that I haven’t seen before, she would be my top choice.
Here’s my ranking of her albums from best to worst. I am not counting her projects with John Parrish, although I like some of that stuff.
Rid of Me
To Bring You My Love
4-Track Demos
Is This Desire?
Stories from the Sea
Dry
Uh Huh Her
White Chalk
An excellent summary of FZ. Superb musicianship, but you really have to sit down, and listen to appreciate it.
I find Rid of Me unlistenable from a sound production/engineering perspective. The sound levels are horribly balanced on that album, making it unlistenable anywhere expect a pristine isolated sound booth.
Creatively, though, it’s one of my favorites
And with a just little bit of luck, you’ll be rewarded. Zappa’s stuff is all over the map. There’s an awful lot to choose from, and the quality varies wildly.
A lot of it is pure inspiration; some of it is genius (in the modern, overused and devalued sense of that word); some of it is okay.
Unfortunately, Frank was extremely egotistical and arrogant, and never had anybody who could or would give him negative feedback where it was needed; as a result, a very large amount of his output is unlistenable, self-indulgent crap, however well-rehearsed, well performed, and difficult to play it may have been.
But as I see it, here’s the interesting part:
ask ANY two Zappa fans* to categorize any selected piece of his music, and likely as not you’ll find one person’s Zappa Genius in the other person’s Zappa Crap.
- I’ve been one since 1967, and consider about ten of his albums to be some of the greatest music of the past 60 years.
That’s how I see it, anyway.
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That’s the album I mentioned in post 66. I don’t think it counts because it was put out by Columbia as revenge for him leaving it. It is not something he desired to issue or approve in any way. And it sure wasn’t critically approved. It’s one of the few Dylan albums I don’t have.
It’s probably better than Self Portrait, for what little that’s worth.
That’s Steve Albini for you. He once said the reason he always mixed vocals so low is because he couldn’t bear the sound of the human voice. :rolleyes:
I don’t love the mixing either. But apparently that’s how PJ wanted it. She has stated so it many interviews. 4-Track Demos is better sound-wise. It’s different versions of those songs and her voice is higher in the mix.
Oooh, one has just ocurred to me,
Stand! - Sly and family Stone.
It got, and still does get, loads of very favourable critical reviews, I even have a copy myself, however…
Sly Stone’s idea of generating immediacy by having absolutely awful sound engineering is extremely suspect in my view. I just do not believe that a moderate song can be improved by terrible sound engineering and a great song is not made any better by it either.
‘Sing a simple song’ is a case in point - its pretty poor and yet Sly seemed to think this was making the sound rough, dirty and down, when its just crap, don’t get me wrong, the song is fine but the production values are lousy, and what makes it worse is that this was intentional
‘You can make it if you try’ is terrible, I used to look at the needle of my turntable after this song thinking that maybe it had picked up some fluff.
Yet on the very same album other tracks are fine, I find it is so frustrating.
That reminds me of High/Low by Nada Surf. I’m not sure what critics per se thought about it, but everyone I knew that had heard it was raving about how the songs are totally not like the single off it (“Popular”), with the heavy implication that they are so much better than that novelty song.
Well, they are different all right. As in unlistenable. You can’t hear even one instrument correctly, they are all in a shambles somehow in a way that I didn’t think was even possible, but mainly the vocals are too low.
It was so bad that I thought something was wrong with the headphones at the used CD store, either that or the first song was a throwaway using crappy engineering to make some sort of artistic statement. So I fastforwarded through a few tracks. Same bogus engineering. So it might be the headphones.
So just for shiggles, I skipped to the single “Popular”. Crystal fucking clear. WTF? The songs actually seemed decently written and performed, it was like the producers tried to stab the band in the back with crappy production.
Sadly, I have to agree with that. The production is pretty disappointing, especially when you consider that PJ Harvey albums are usually very well produced.
Save Me by Silver Convention. I can appreciate disco and everything, but this album enrages me with how terrible it is. The songs are so repetitive and fundamentally basic that it makes the album sound like it was thrown together in one sitting.
I love Kraftwerk overall, but I can’t stomach their first two albums. They’re just too weird and full of long, drawn-out sounds to be listenable. Speaking of very early electronic music, I’d have to say, well, a lot of it. The likes of Pierre Schaeffer, Jean-Jacques Perry, Hot Butter, Ted Atking, Dave Richmond… I could go on and on.